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May 4, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:26
May 4, 2012, Friday, Hour #3
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As the end of a busy broadcast week approaches, Rush Limbaugh with the identical amount of energy we had at noon on Monday.
It's Friday, live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open live Friday.
One big, exciting, busy broadcast hour remaining, and it's great to have you with us, my friends.
800-282-2882.
If you want to be on the program, the email address, LRushbo at EIBNet.com.
Okay, Tea Party and Indiana.
By the way, Arrin Hatch narrowly staved off a Tea Party challenge in his bid to win the Republican primary for his seat out there.
And that's only because he recognized early enough that he was going to have to make nice with the Tea Party in Utah.
There's a lot of people in the drive-bys, and this is good, actually, who think that the Tea Party's gone away.
Disbanded.
There are two reasons they think this.
One is the Tea Party movement was a protest movement.
They don't see any more protests.
They figure Tea Party people have gotten tired because they know that the Tea Party was made up of non-professional people in the sense that they were not professional protesters.
They were not people who spent their time as activists in politics.
They were essence grassroots.
That's exactly who the Tea Party is.
What's happened is the Tea Party has moved beyond a protest movement.
The other reason the drive-bys think that the Tea Party movement has basically gone out of existence is that Romney's the nominee.
And Romney was not the Tea Party candidate.
The Tea Party had about seven candidates, and the Tea Party vote was split in all these primaries.
And that's why the Tea Party candidate didn't win.
I can't tell you the hopes that existed within the Tea Party coming out of the 2010 midterms that a Tea Party-friendly candidate would then emerge and get the Republican nomination.
And by Tea Party, we're talking full-fledged grassroots conservative candidate.
And there were plenty to choose from.
Too many, as it turned out.
The vote was split, plus Ron Paul thrown into the mix.
And the Republican establishment took full advantage of splitting the Tea Party vote in the primaries.
In fact, they started out intending to do that.
The Republican establishment started out intending for the moderate candidate to get the nomination.
There still is within the Republican Party establishment a disdain for the Tea Party, and it's on display in Indiana.
The Republican establishment has put every bit of its muscle and money behind Richard Luger, the incumbent.
Dick Murdoch is the Tea Party candidate.
Doesn't have any money compared to the Republican establishment.
And Luger has been outspent 10 to 1 millions of dollars.
And yet the latest numbers from the Indianapolis Star show that Murdoch is up 10 48 to 38 four days before the Indiana primary.
Luger, it's an open primary apparently in Indiana.
Luger is asking Democrats and Independents to cross party lines and save him next week.
In addition to that, this from the AP, so it may not be entirely accurate.
But the AP is reporting that Luker said to reporters that he is best suited to represent Jewish and female Hoosiers along with ethnic minorities.
So the Republican establishment candidate, Dick Luger, the independent, has been forced to ask Democrats to cross the line next Tuesday and vote for him in the Indiana primary along with independents.
And he's telling reporters, and in a not-so-disguised slam, that he's the guy best suited to represent Jewish and female Indiana voters along with other ethnic minorities.
Now, this is in and of itself, it's a profound Tea Party success.
And I'll give you another example.
I'll use myself to describe the naivete and the rose-colored glasses through which new arrivals look at politics.
As I say, when you're in junior high and you're learning Civics 101 and they teach you the basics of how it all happens, everybody concludes that the people with the best ideas win.
In fact, I think this is in part what leads to the assumption that everybody prefers Democrats.
Because when I was a kid, the Democrats were winning everything.
Republicans weren't winning.
And at the same time, I'm being taught that politics is the best people win, the best ideas and so forth.
And so I'm hearing my dad, you know, rip the Democrats to shreds every night at dinner and doing it very effectively as far as I'm concerned.
But the Democrats seem winning.
And then politics is being taught to me as the best ideas win.
It's only when you grow up and mature a little bit that you learn that politics too often has nothing to do with ideas at all.
It has to do with strategy, vote buying, using the power of the purse to buy votes, make people dependent, who has the most money to spend running negative ads, all that stuff.
And a lot of people just, after going through the Civics 101 of it all and thinking of it as an idealistic pursuit, get so turned off by it that they tune out.
And they may vote every four years, but they certainly don't orient their lives around it because it's too frustrating.
And they end up not trusting any of the political institutions that exist and nor the people that populate them.
That's what is so amazing about the Tea Party.
The Tea Party is made up of people of Civics 101.
And it is a bottom-up organization.
And it is where ideas do win.
It's where ideas do matter the most, along with the character of the candidates.
And there are about 60 of them in the House, for example, in the form of freshmen, rookies.
Alan West is among them.
Joe Walsh is a great one from, I believe, Illinois.
And this guy, Murdoch, now, now he's an elected official.
He's not green to politics, but he's a Tea Partier.
He's not favored by the Republican establishment.
The Howie slash DePaw Indiana battleground poll conducted by two prominent Republican and Democrat pollsters shows Dick Murdoch with a 48 to 38 percent lead over Luger.
The poll shows a dramatic slide for Luger, who in his last election in 2006 won with more than 80% of the vote after Democrats considered him so unbeatable, they didn't even feel a candidate against him.
Only about a month ago, the same battleground poll showed Luger leading Murdoch 42 to 35%.
When voters who were not solid in their support for a candidate yet and were merely leaning in one direction or the other are removed, Murdoch is still 43, 35% over Luger.
Just a month ago, the same survey was good enough to get analysts believing that Luger could hold on on Tuesday.
But now there's a 10-point deficit that Luger has to make up, and he's asking Democrats to cross the line and independents to cross the line, and he's throwing all kinds of ethnic and racial cards out there.
Well, I'm better for the Jewish, and I'm better for women, and I'm better for other ethnic minorities out there.
So at least it looks like the Indiana Tea Party has learned its lesson.
Because Dan Coates won in 2010 because his opposition was split among four opponents.
This time, Tea Party put up one, Murdoch, to oppose Luger.
And I can't emphasize enough that the Tea Party is indeed bottom-up.
And the people who made 2010 happen haven't gone anywhere.
They are organizing.
They are larger in number.
You just don't see them because they're not a protest movement.
This idealism, it's almost embarrassing for me to admit this, but I will.
This program debuted in 1988.
And even in 1990, 91, I was still so naive that I thought when I opened a newspaper and I saw a profile of any person,
be it a politician or an entertainer or whatever, I really thought, as I say this is embarrassing to admit, I really thought that that person was being profiled because that person had done something exceptional to warrant it.
And that wasn't the case at all.
People are profiled for sometimes that's the last reason.
They have PR agents, flax agents that are out hustling lazy reporters.
And they're being pitched.
The reporters are being pitched.
Hey, why don't you put my guy on the cover here?
Why don't you do a story on Celebrity X?
And they work it and they work it and they get it done.
I remember whenever it happened in the 70s when Springsteen was on the cover of both Time and Newsweek.
Oh, wow, this guy must be hot as hell.
And I'd never heard of him.
And I was a DJ.
And I said, who the hell is this guy?
And I thought, of course, it's because Springsteen was the greatest musician that somebody had just discovered.
And that was the last reason why it happened.
And by the way, making it even more personable, when this program was beginning and true exceptionalism was occurring and things happening in radio that hadn't happened in 50 years, it was totally ignored.
And in my naive state, I said, well, how come these other schlubs and nobody and it took me a while to figure out it's because I'm conservative and everybody in the journalism business is liberal.
I knew that was the case in politics, but I didn't know it was also true in the entertainment media and in the sports media and in every media.
In fact, I don't know when it was that I first predicted to you that somebody's going to come along and suggest that football be banned.
Yesterday, I'm reading in leisure time.
I'm reading a bunch of Apple blogs trying to figure out what's going on in the high-tech world.
When's the next iPhone coming?
What are the rumors?
What's it going to have?
And I've got a story, what would the end of football look like?
And it prints out to eight pages, and it's on a tech blog.
Not a sports blog, not a news blog.
It's on a tech blog, which is populated by young liberals.
The NFL is done for the year, but it's not pure fantasy to suggest that it may be done for good in the not-too-distant future.
How might such a doomsday scenario play out?
What would be the economic and social consequences?
And they go on to describe what's going to bring football down is all of these lawsuits over concussions and injuries.
And this guy predicts, once we have a suicide of a high school football player, that's going to be the beginning of the end.
Then the parents aren't going to let their kids play.
Then the lawsuits against the helmet makers and the coaches and the trainers.
And then it's going to be over.
Now, Snurdley's in there shaking his head.
I can guarantee you this is going to happen.
There are going to be, this is it.
It's a liberal tech blog.
Because after all, football's full of what?
Violent, brutish bullies when you get right down to it.
Violent, brute bullies who don't know any better, who couldn't do anything else in life.
And so they are trained and programmed to make themselves insane with never-ending hits to the head from the time they start playing Pop Warner all the way up to the NFL if they make it.
They are victims of a brutish culture led by the American people who want to see brutal hits and injuries every Sunday.
This is, it's closer than you think.
What happens if the lawsuits fail?
Well, I don't know what happens.
They all aren't going to fail.
One of them is going to win.
There are so many of them.
One of them is going to win.
There's a giant win class action with now over 1,000 NFL players, but there are smaller ones.
But that's not this guy's point.
This point is when a high school player, because of too many hits to the head, takes his own life, and they can say it's because of concussions or allege, or a college player, not dies because of an accident on the field, but commits suicide.
My point is with this, just that I know who these people are.
And now that this is being speculated about on a tech blog, wait till the forerunners of the liberal sports media get hold of it.
Now, even though their bread is buttered with this stuff, know these people, and some of them are leading the charge and don't even know it with the way they're covering the sport.
Some of them are leading the charge to getting the game banned, and they don't even know it by the way they're covering it.
Demanding this and demanding all these new safety features, safety regulations, safety rules, empowering the government to police the game.
They're begging for it, and they don't even realize that they, in their naivete, think they're working hard to make the game safer and so forth.
And all they're doing is paving the way for the game to be banned.
They don't even know it.
Because most liberals don't understand the consequences of their success.
What are the consequences of LBJ's success in the war on poverty?
More poverty.
Medicare, Medicaid.
What are the consequences?
Going broke doesn't work.
Liberals do not understand the consequences of their quota.
Well, their success is failure.
December 14th is when I made the prediction last year.
December 14th, 2011.
Anyway, I got to take a break here.
No, it's got nothing to do with the Tea Party.
I'm just talking about my naivete, media, people's naivete about politics.
The Tea Party is where this idealism can be practiced and where it matters.
That's the point I'm trying to make.
It really is an antidote to the corruption that's taken place elsewhere in politics.
We're back.
It's Open Line Friday.
Here's Steve in Winder, Georgia.
Great to have you on the EIB Network.
Hello.
Hi, Cheekbone Dittos from a 116th Cherokee White Male Air Rush.
Thank you for the call, sir.
Great to have you with us.
You know, being someone that's twice the Native American as Elizabeth Warren is, I'd just like to tell her to shut up.
You can't put a teaspoon of brown paint in a can of white and a gallon can of white and call it brown.
People will think you're an idiot.
Well, I think that's happened.
I think that's happened.
I just happened to late on that one.
Sorry, Rush.
How do you, what's the best way to let your neighbors know that you're an idiot?
Open your mouth.
No, put an Obama bumper sticker on your car.
What's the best way to let them know that you're dumber than that?
Let them know that you're, I don't know, tell me.
Put it on the paint.
Put it on the paint, okay?
I got it.
I think.
I was looking here, and there's something else about, it's a Boston Herald story.
I just got it.
Elizabeth Warren brings no peace to Democrats.
Stumbling efforts to douse the firestorm surrounding her claims that she's an Indian have raised concerns among local and national Democrats who are questioning her campaign's competence.
There's nobody watching this that doesn't think she's in big trouble.
I guess this is a confirmation from my buddy there that they're laughing at her.
Greb, Greg, we got a minute and a half here.
Let's a little bit of our Elizabeth Warren update theme song today.
Just take us into the break.
Let's just hit this again here because folks pretty much says it all.
Elizabeth Warren being laughed at now.
Democrats in panic in Massachusetts over her claim that she is essentially what this song says.
That's right.
She's smarter than you are.
Help free.
That's all I have for her.
Help free.
How I love to hate the word.
Help free.
She's no good than war.
Most war against me since the day I was born.
Elizabeth Warren speaking with forked tongue, apparently.
We never settled went from town to town.
When you're not welcome, you don't have to.
You know, if Warren Churchill had a daughter, would she look like Elizabeth Warren?
We will be right back, folks.
Do not go away.
It's open line Friday, and who's next?
Neil in Charlotte, North Carolina.
I'm glad you waited.
Great to have you on the program.
Hi.
Hey, Rush.
You pointed out earlier that the Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs numbers and unemployment rates are derived from surveys.
Well, by nature, those numbers must have a margin of error.
And that's the dirty little secret.
You can find the margin of errors at BLS.com under the technical footnotes for the reports.
And you scroll down and it says reliability of estimates.
And you'll see that the non-farm payroll numbers, margin of error, hold on to your seat, plus or minus 100,000.
That means, and the report said, and the footnotes say that because it can be a negative number, they cannot for certain guarantee that there is any increase unless the number is above 100,000.
So we got 115,000.
It could be 215,000, it could be 15.
And the same goes for the unemployment number.
The margin of error for the unemployment number, here we go.
Plus or minus 300,000.
This is true, but it's true for every report.
And it's not just for this one.
It's for every report since we've been alive.
So it's part of the fact.
It's an interesting thing to know.
Don't misunderstand.
But I think with this bunch, if they're reporting $115,000, it's not that high.
Right.
They're doing whatever they have to do to move that number down, the unemployment rate, 8.2 to 8.1%.
It's just a poll.
It's like I said, they call people.
They just, have you looked for work in the last four days or four weeks?
And whatever people tell them is what they record.
That's why that margin of error is so high.
This is not even a rigged drive-by poll.
It's worse than that.
The Bureau of Labor, he's right.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment stuff is just a poll.
But it's a poll that everybody has accepted by virtue of the fact that we talk about it every month as though the number is real.
And then we parse it from there, which we've done for years.
But after that, Neil, don't forget, then they seasonally adjust.
And then they weekly revise.
They tell us about the seasonal adjustments at the end of the season, but they don't tell us about, well, they do tell us about the weekly revisions.
They just don't get reported.
But he's right, nevertheless.
Margin of error, plus or minus 100,000.
So it's possible there were only 15,000 jobs created.
It's possible there were no jobs created, too.
The margin of error, who says it's 100,000?
They do.
Margin of error could be 100 million.
Well, that's probably not that bad, but it cannot be a precise science.
Just can't be.
So it is there to create an impression and a mood.
Neil, thanks for the call.
Pete in New Orleans.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Thank you for taking my call.
You bet, sir.
I know you are a great, great economist and what have you.
I mean, you have pretty much your pulse on a lot of what's going on in the world.
My question is: this: with such a huge deficit that the United States is operating in year after year, is it all these, isn't this fact draining the world of the Funds that would otherwise go to, say, underdeveloped countries by the fact that the American government is sapping all of these money from these international funds.
i don't get any mention of struggling economies in the world having to pay a say high interest rates because the american government is is happened all of these funds and using most of this money for its own use now if i know that it would have been where we were at I'm losing you here because as I'm understanding your question, let's make up a country, San Cordoba.
What right does San Cordoba have to our money?
And what does it matter whether we're running a deficit in San Cordoba unless they're using U.S. dollars and they're not.
They're using Cuban pesos, which are worthless.
No, no.
What I'm saying is we're going to China and borrow funds from China.
And we're the biggest borrower of Chinese money.
Now, if we weren't in the market borrowing this money from China, China would have to go to, say, Bangladesh or the Congo or Sudan.
And they could lend the money, and these countries could borrow at a much lower rate.
Well, wait a second.
Wait a second.
We are borrowing money from the CHICOMs.
They're not getting money from us except interest payments as long as we make them.
But we are depending on the CHICOMs.
And it's not.
I can see where you think it'd be the other way around because we end up owing them big time.
And if they call the loan, all hell could break loose.
You're saying if we were solvent and we didn't need any money from the CHICOMs, you're asking who would they then lend it to?
Well, they would probably lend to some of these other underdeveloped countries who are struggling to run their governments.
You see what I'm saying?
They would probably borrow at a much cheaper rate that they are able to borrow now since the ChiCom would have this huge market in the United States to lend money to.
I don't know, even with the circumstances that you've said, I don't know what you're asking me.
Well, or what problem you think exists because of our debt as it relates to the Chikom and the third world.
I guess it's the third world.
I'm having trouble understanding in this.
That's right, the third world, yeah.
What I'm saying is that the third world, the world economies are struggling right now to borrow for their own, like Greece and Italy and Spain and all, are probably having to pay a high interest rates to, say, to the Chinese government to borrow because China could say, well, if you don't borrow, you know, I have a huge market in the United States that is willing to borrow from me at such a rate.
If you want me to lend to you, you're going to have to beat the United States rate of interest.
And these countries are probably having trouble financing their own debts because of the, like I say, all this money that the United States is using up in the world.
Well, if we had, see, the problem, if we had a global currency where everybody was using the same currency and we were spending it all and borrowing from everybody else and thereby preventing everybody else from borrowing money, I can understand that.
But Greece and Spain use the Euro and they're primarily going to Germany for their finances.
China, too.
I read where the Chinese government was looking to finance some of these deficit spendings and Europe.
And my thinking is that they're going to probably have to, if they do finance these debts, they're going to probably finance them at the higher rate of interest because the United States is such a big user of Chinese funds.
I'm sorry.
I'm not able to get my arms around this.
I'm not sure.
Why don't we try?
Why don't you tell me what you think the problem the United States is in?
Are you trying to tell me that we're in trouble for some reason?
You know, what I'm saying is that the fact that the United States borrows so much money, it's keeping some of these developing countries, third world countries, from financing their own debt.
Okay, so if we were more solvent and weren't borrowing money from the Chinese, the Chinese would have to lend it to other poor countries, and the poor countries wouldn't be as poor.
No, I wouldn't have to pay so much for the money, for the borrowing.
Their interest rates would probably be a hell of a lot of people.
So it's our fault the third world is the third world.
No, but I'm not saying that.
I'm saying that what I'm saying is.
But you are saying that.
You're saying we're soaking up all the money because of our irresponsible spending.
You sound to me like Obama.
I didn't think we had one of those in the audience when I'm having any trouble.
You sound like Obama.
We're responsible for the third world because we're spending all the money, and therefore we're stealing everybody's resources.
And we are preventing San Cordoba from growing because we're driving the cost of money up so high with our irresponsible borrowing and spending.
And therefore, the condition of the third world is our fault because we're so damn selfish.
If that's what you think, then the guy who's primarily responsible for this is Obama because our borrowing has never been higher.
Our printing rate has never been higher.
I got to take a break.
We'll be back after this.
Don't go away.
Okay, correction time.
I was labeling under some, I can easily say I misspoke, but I was laboring under some misinformation.
Orrin Hatch hadn't beaten anybody.
He's in a runoff with a Tea Party candidate named Dan Lushenquist.
And that runoff primary will be June 26th.
So the Tea Party candidate, what I was trying to say was that Hatch, what I meant to say was that Hatch was challenged by the Tea Party, made some adjustments to account for it, but he didn't beat them.
There's a runoff, and he may not survive it, just like Luger might not in Indiana.
So I know people have been throwing things at the radio and screaming, trying to get the telephones and so forth.
And it was, I just got it wrong.
I could easily say I misspoke, but I didn't.
I just got it wrong.
So I wanted to correct that.
And give me Jane in Lake Oswego, Oregon, before we have to move.
Jane, great to have you on the program.
Welcome to Open Line Friday.
Thank you, Rush.
I have to tell you that my husband has been a fan of yours since you were operating out of Sacramento.
He listens to you regularly, and I can't tell you how many times he's wanted to pick up the phone and applaud you and add thoughts and so forth.
And he is a tenure NFL vet, played in the 50s and the 60s, went to USC where he was a running back.
Let me tell you something about the NFL in the 50s and 60s.
I mean, it's brutal today, there's no question.
But back then, Clotheslining, for example, was legal.
The equipment was not nearly what it is today.
People like your husband played that game.
And as brutal as it is today, it was more so back then, I believe.
Well, I think you're absolutely right.
And I have to tell you, these are some of the toughest guys around.
In fact, one of my favorite pictures of John is a picture where Night Train Lane is clotheslining him.
In fact, it's one of his favorite pictures.
He looks at that and laughs and says, yeah, he was awfully tough.
I mean, that's the attitude that they have back then.
It's great to hear these guys get together, too, and reminisce because they laugh about it.
I mean, they're passionate about it.
Jane, let me tell you.
She's exactly the average human being wouldn't last one play on the offensive line.
Those guys are so tough, the average person wouldn't last.
And you're right.
I mean, Chuck Bednerick beat the hell out of Chuck Nolan one year.
Look what he did to Frank Gifford back in the 50s with a huge hit.
I mean, Gifford was not cold for weeks.
So it's anyway, it's a game now that's under attack, Jane.
And I'm telling you, there are well-intentioned liberals that think it's too risky and too dangerous, and they're going to try to change it.
I guarantee you.
And the liberal sports media doesn't realize it, but they're helping pave the way for it by the way they're covering all this.
They are.
And I understand your point on that.
And I have to tell you, though, that I was not married to John.
I'm a little bit younger than he is.
I was not married to John when he played, but we've been together about 30 years.
And it was when Night Train passed away that I heard that there was not enough money to bury him and that he had been struggling.
And I think that most people today do not realize that the guys back then didn't make enough money to live on your round.
Well, made a lot less.
I know they had jobs in the offseason, full-time jobs in the offseason.
There's no, but their careers nevertheless ended at the same time these guys' careers do.
It's never been a lifetime career either.
This is another thing that the expectation now that the league should pay you for the rest of your life after you retire, where'd that come from?
Good old liberalism.
Anyway, Jane, I got to run.
I'm really up against.
I'm glad you called.
I wanted to get your call in.
Well, there you have it, my friends.
Another exciting, busy broadcast week comes to a sad and disappointing close.
It's only sad and disappointing because it's come to a close.
It wasn't sad and disappointing while it was taking place.
It never is.
It's just the opposite.
But in a mere two days or so, we'll be back revved up and ready to pick up where we left off.
Don't pay any attention to what happens over the weekend.
We do that for you.
And on Monday, we'll tell you what happened and as a bonus, what to think about it as well.
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